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[Efren is G.O.A.T.]

Excluding the boring side quests, I had a really great time with this game. Loved the story, music and combat but...this is not the direction I want the series to take. FF7 Remake is way more in line with what I want from Final Fantasy and the new Rebirth trailer has me hyped beyond reason!

I really do think FF16 is a great game for what it is so I'm gonna praise it for what it does but my thirst is not fully quenched. Exploration is basically non-existent, no mini games, the side quests don't offer really nice rewards and the RPG elements are lacking severely.

 

[Kacho]

I dunno. When people have to go out of their way to convince people a game is good that speaks for itself. Doubt I’ll care enough to play whenever it hits Steam. I was expecting more.

 

[sigmaZ]

FFXIII is much better than people give it credit for. I can understand the complaints and many are valid but it's still a really solid game at its core due to the paradigm system and the story does pay off but the character arcs take a while and yea, if you leave early all the characters come off as one note and annoying.

It's funny because I was watching Easy Allies play through it on stream and after 16 it seemed so much better. I still think the story and pacing was not grounded enough, but even on release I enjoyed the gameplay.

 

[adamsapple]

I dunno. When people have to go out of their way to convince people a game is good that speaks for itself. Doubt I’ll care enough to play whenever it hits Steam. I was expecting more.

Honestly, it's fine as an action RPG. The "Not my final fantasy" crowd is incredibly loud (and oft annoying). Go in expecting a polished albeit unevenly paced ARPG and you won't be disappointed.

 

[sigmaZ]

I'm currently in a part where I'm taken hostage by kupka not sure how far into the game. It's been a slog ever since it went open world at this point I'm trying to force myself to finish it. The intro part of the game hit hard and had me hyped for the rest of the game with it's games of thrones story but it kinda fell apart. Best way i can describe it is to compare it to the badass mgs v intro, after escaping the hospital the game falls off a similar cliff only saved by its God tier gameplay which ff16 doesn't have.

Yeah. The rest of the game is pretty much like that outside of Dion's arch. I ended up slowly playing a little each day until I beat it to counter the slog. Felt like passing a giant BM as to not flare a hemorrhoid.

 

[Kumomeme]

good game not necessary mean it was flawless. lot of people misunderstood this. when someone said this game is good doesnt mean they said the game is perfect.

this game is good example of it. not to mention some people been unnecessary too critical over it. there is tons of very well received game but people defended the obvious flaw to the death. sadly this game didnt get that kind of bias treatment.


personally the flaw the game has is not to the point where it drag/ruin the core of the game. the foundation is solid and some of it also depend on player's preferences. it is far from 13 and 15 situation. they finally DID it.

great game but to be honest not quite what i expected from developers behind FF14. personally the writing is good but still far from the quality in Heavensward and the lack of big cities and area to area progression(thanks to Hideway centralization) is suprising me considering FF14 is full of those. this is merely personal preferences of mine.

put aside the quality and preferences, aside 14, this is a first final fantasy since 12 that has complete package. story, gameplay and content. it is a prove that Square is still capable to make a complete rpg game. this is a first big step. this game should be a jump start of new beginning for the franchise. new set of standard.

however this game also show how much of content size, time, visual and budget for development scope increase compared to 20 years ago. what feasible before is very expensive today. Square been searching for right formula that could serve as blueprint for the franchise for years and this game could be precursor to that. between this game and upcoming VII Rebirth, could be a good guideline of where the developers can use to gauge where to draw the line to balance those things in future game development.

 

[DelireMan7]

• The Pacing is atrocious. Some of the worst I've seen in gaming. It typically goes like this:
  • 60 - 90 minutes of well written and well directed storytelling cutscenes, followed by a dungeon crawl that's basically straight hallways with battle after battle, followed by an amazing set piece fight.
  • 5 - 6 hours of MMO quest design that basically involves you going from NPC to NPC to NPC to NPC, talking to them. There are rarely any proper cutscenes during this time, it's basically just Clive and an NPC standing statically in front of each other exchanging dialogue. You occasionally are told to go kill something which takes all of 5 minutes, before it's back to more dialogue.
  • 60 - 90 minutes of the good stuff.
  • Back to 5 - 6 hours of the bad stuff.
  • Rinse and repeat.
• The game is completely lacking in any meaningful RPG mechanics. There is no good reason the game couldn't have Elemental Damage, Buffs/Debuffs, Gear sets that provide passive bonuses and effects to your attacks/spells, party members with separate skill trees, and command bars with cooldowns for their skills. Think how it was handled in GoW: Ragnarok with Atreius and Freya.
• There is nothing to do outside of the main story. Killing monsters and poorly designed side quests. That's it. No mini games, no explorable dungeons/caves, no nothing. The world is empty and boring.

They easily could've trimmed a lot of fat and brought the game length down to 15-20 hours, added more RPG mechanics, and FFXVI would've been received a lot better. I think it's a fine 7/10 game, that had every right to be a 10/10 if smarter people were making the decisions over at CBU3. There was a lot about FFXVI that sounded great on paper. Some of it they executed very well. Some of it they completely shit the bed on.

My thoughts exactly.

This game should be much shorter.

I'd summarize my opinion on it by saying it's an above average game but a mediocre Final Fantasy. The universe and story is very Final Fantasy but on the gameplay mechanics it's not at all (and I don't even speak about the battle system).

I haven't play XIIIs but I can say that for me XV is better than XVI. Actually in term of Final Fantasy, XVI would be ranked quite low for me.

 

[Boneless]

Its alright, FFXV was better.

 

[Arsic]

E

I dunno. When people have to go out of their way to convince people a game is good that speaks for itself. Doubt I’ll care enough to play whenever it hits Steam. I was expecting more.

This was less of a convince and more to share opinions outside of the OT which is likely to be mostly positive.

All of us are (or most are) grown ass adults. Do whatever you want with your time. XVI is a good game to some, and a bad one to others based off this thread. Plenty to improve on but I’m glad I picked it back up and finished it.

 

[kazuyamishima]

 

[mejin]

Loved It.

 

[Shake Your Rump]

Thread title is inaccurate. FF16 is a terrible game. As in, all the aspects that make a game a game are either incomplete, tedious, or missing. Every other aspect is absolutely fantastic. The music, writing, animation, voice acting, graphics, and set-pieces are near perfection.

 

[Dynomite]

But it doesn't have a wonderful story imo. The first half is intriguing. But it turns predictable and generic fast.

The story started off promising enough because I thought it was more grounded. Then it turned into typical JRPG kill god foolishness.

 

[Madflavor]

The story started off promising enough because I thought it was more grounded. Then it turned into typical JRPG kill god foolishness.

That drove me nuts. They were like "This is Final Fantasy like you've never seen before! It's aimed towards adults, has mature themes, features an older hero, and deals with politics like Game of Thrones. Now go kill God again."

The Prologue was by far the best written and most interesting part of the game, and nothing afterward came close. A Revenge story featuring a ruthlessly pissed of Protagonist at the center of a political heavy fantasy setting that features Kaiju as an allegory to nuclear power, was more than enough to tell a compelling story.

 

[Myths]

It’s a great game, and I’m only glad the team continues to try different things with every entry (even if it’s not to my taste or appeal). In this way, the series is never stale and there are others you can go play if tried and true is what you prefer.

 

[Rea]

I prefer FF15 than this game. My worst FF that I've ever played.

 

[SkylineRKR]

That drove me nuts. They were like "This is Final Fantasy like you've never seen before! It's aimed towards adults, has mature themes, features an older hero, and deals with politics like Game of Thrones. Now go kill God again."

The Prologue was by far the best written and most interesting part of the game, and nothing afterward came close. A Revenge story featuring a ruthlessly pissed of Protagonist at the center of a political heavy fantasy setting that features Kaiju as an allegory to nuclear power, was more than enough to tell a compelling story.

The prologue is a huge bait and switch. It sets up a very engaging story and deals with different timelines. But beyond it the narrative falls off and the fetch quests become progressively worse. The demo was set to be my GOTY, the full game I never managed to finish.

 

[-Zelda-]

It's a good game in that I liked it, but no where near as much as past entries in the franchise. It may be controversial to some, but I actually enjoyed my time more with the FF13 trilogy and even FF15, more than this. Glad I have and beat it, but not as great as those entries, let alone entries from even earlier than those. 7/10 for me.

 

[ViciousAgenda]

Completed it tonight, had a blast with it. It definitely has issues but they didn't sour the package for me.

 

[sloppyjoe_gamer]

The noise of Clives leather clothes squeaking as it rubs together when he walks and runs is really annoying

 

[Buggy Loop]

That's an incredibly low bar.

Better than 13 & 15, congrats 16.

 

[Brock2621]

I’ve been ruminating on this game and it’s still hitting me in all the right ways for a fantastic story. The loot and side quests need work, but man it’s a complete and satisfying (non fragmented) story that I love, esp the setting and time period

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

The story started off promising enough because I thought it was more grounded. Then it turned into typical JRPG kill god foolishness.

That + there’s hours of boring MMO quests and boring exposition between every major story beat.

For every riveting GoT-style drama scene or jaw-dropping action sequence, there are like 20 scenes of people standing there like mannequins rambling on in a slow monotone voice with pauses after every line talking about shit nobody cares about.

IMO being boring is a worse offense than being cliche. I could maybe pardon the game for turning into another “kill god using anime super powers” story if it didn’t literally put me to sleep several times.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

That drove me nuts. They were like "This is Final Fantasy like you've never seen before! It's aimed towards adults, has mature themes, features an older hero, and deals with politics like Game of Thrones. Now go kill God again."

The Prologue was by far the best written and most interesting part of the game, and nothing afterward came close. A Revenge story featuring a ruthlessly pissed of Protagonist at the center of a political heavy fantasy setting that features Kaiju as an allegory to nuclear power, was more than enough to tell a compelling story.

Yeah, it's a tragedy really.

 

[SlimySnake]

Its a good game but the mmo style fetch quests DURING STORY MISSIONS killed the game for me. I couldnt even skip the side missions because the main quests were MMO. Fuck that. I dont play that trash for a reason. Get this shit out of our AAA $70 games. We have standards.

Also, I hate the bait and switch on principle. They released that demo knowing full well it was the best 2 hours of the game and that the rest of the story was nothing like it. at least not after the second time skip. the last 2-3rds of the story or roughly 30-40 hours were classic jrpg fate trash and I felt cheated and fooled into buying this game on day one.

Sorry but i can excuse game design issues, pacing issues, poor side quests, but if I feel cheated ..... bet it a visual downgrade or scrapped feature or a story that was sold as game of thrones but ended up as bullshit jrpg crap then i cant let that slide.

 

[skit_data]

Certainly one of the best games I've played this year. Incredibly strong start, I liked the more mature and dark tone, it had really fun combat, larger than life boss battles and at times extremely impressive visually. The ending fell a little short IMO. Ironically it felt a little like the Game of Thrones in that regard as well, but I also can't really imagine how the end could be portrayed better without falling into "happily ever after" territory and I never really wanted that either.
Sadly a lot of the sidequests towards the end was honestly really really boring whereas others (Jills and especially Torgals) felt like they should've been part of the main questline because they felt more important than a lot of the "speak to this person that sends you to this person"-quests that were for some strange reason part of the main quest.

I don't really regret preordering it and I'll buy the DLCs for a Final Fantasy difficulty playthrough but I think killing of some of the boring sidequests and introducing a little more variation when it came to equipment etc. would've meant a much more solid game.

Oh, and elemental damage of course. Making that a non-factor was quite puzzling.

 

[K2D]

I dunno. When people have to go out of their way to convince people a game is good that speaks for itself. Doubt I’ll care enough to play whenever it hits Steam. I was expecting more.

That me with 99.98 games out on the market.

It's a particularly shitty take.

I'm convinced it's a good game and I still don't want buy it.
Partly because I know I wasn't made for me and my old ass gamer taste. Partly because I know it would slide right into my back log. Partly because I haven't even played any of the +90 scored games this year.

I had to be convinced Bloodborne was a good game. I had to convince MYSELF it was great game. It's one of my top 5 games now.

 

[The artful mincer]

The sad thing about FF15 is that it failed to achieve what it it set out to do.

The sad thing about FF16 is that it achieves exactly what it set out to do and isn't very good.

God I hope FF7 rebirth knocks it out the park 90+ metascore, record sales etc.

Hopefully it will make so much money that square can't ignore it and it will be the template going forward.

The Bullshit of Final Fantasy can be whatever the developers of the day think it should will hopefully end.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Ff16 shouldn't have had any side quests and I think it would have been a decent 7 out of ten game.

For me it's more a 6. I regret wasting my time on it. I could have spent that time in zelda or any other good game that came out this year.

 

[rofif]

The sad thing about FF15 is that it failed to achieve what it it set out to do.

The sad thing about FF16 is that it achieves exactly what it set out to do and isn't very good.

God I hope FF7 rebirth knocks it out the park 90+ metascore, record sales etc.

Hopefully it will make so much money that square can't ignore it and it will be the template going forward.

The Bullshit of Final Fantasy can be whatever the developers of the day think it should will hopefully end.

XV might have failed but it's still incredible game and I think better game than 16.
That said, I really enjoyed 16. it looks amazing and plays great. Only overstays it's welcome. If I knew from the beginning, I would avoid side stuff

 

[sigmaZ]

The sad thing about FF15 is that it failed to achieve what it it set out to do.

The sad thing about FF16 is that it achieves exactly what it set out to do and isn't very good.

Well said. 15 would have likely been much better if they didn't waste the development on the open world. It was like a toddler wielding a machete.

 

[Whitecrow]

FF XV was better because it was fighting for something it believed in.

Jokes aside, there's a lot to enjoy in this game despite it's flaws. It's disappointing story-wise, but if you dont take it seriously, you can have good fun.

 

[SkylineRKR]

This game gets worse the more time progresses. Especially after Baldurs Gate and now I am playing the fantastic Star Ocean 2 remake. Those games are much better RPG than FFXVI.

Even Star Ocean 6, which was on Plus last month, I liked more than FFXVI in terms of traversal, skill builds, looting and crafting. Its just on a lower budget but it does much more things right.

FFXVI is incredibly fucking boring to play.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

7/10 means good.

 

[The artful mincer]

XV might have failed but it's still incredible game and I think better game than 16.
That said, I really enjoyed 16. it looks amazing and plays great. Only overstays it's welcome. If I knew from the beginning, I would avoid side stuff

FF16 is an okay game but it's not what I want from FF.

It "Innovated" into a 3rd person hack and slash arguably the most saturated genre at the moment.

Those games are a dime a dozen. There's not many party based game games especially with a big budget.

In Hindsight its mad they went through this route while throwing away most of the FFs unique flavour.

 

[rofif]

FF16 is an okay game but it's not what I want from FF.

It "Innovated" into a 3rd person hack and slash arguably the most saturated genre at the moment.

Those games are a dime a dozen. There's not many party based game games especially with a big budget.

In Hindsight its mad they went through this route while throwing away most of the FFs unique flavour.

true. It could've been half shorter DMC like game with some new title and it would be just as good.
Padding it and naming it FF16 didn't do much

 

[cireza]

In Hindsight its mad they went through this route while throwing away most of the FFs unique flavour.

Should have been a spin-off.

Square-Enix got it wrong. They thought that if development goes smoothly, it is going to be a good thing. But really, there is no link between a development going well and actually making something people want. Making a game people will enjoy might imply having to go through difficult times in terms of development. Not saying that your development has to be a train-wreck, of course, but they probably lost sight a bit too much of the metric "player having fun" in their process.

 

[Shifty1897]

The Prologue was by far the best written and most interesting part of the game, and nothing afterward came close. A Revenge story featuring a ruthlessly pissed of Protagonist at the center of a political heavy fantasy setting that features Kaiju as an allegory to nuclear power, was more than enough to tell a compelling story.

Damn, you're right.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

The demo was good and then it went downhill from there for me. Way too much time between actual interesting story beats and the side quests are some of the worst in modern gaming.

 

[Madflavor]

This game gets worse the more time progresses. Especially after Baldurs Gate and now I am playing the fantastic Star Ocean 2 remake. Those games are much better RPG than FFXVI.

Even Star Ocean 6, which was on Plus last month, I liked more than FFXVI in terms of traversal, skill builds, looting and crafting. Its just on a lower budget but it does much more things right.

FFXVI is incredibly fucking boring to play.

It’s gonna get worse when FFVII Rebirth
Drops. Proper world exploration, RPG mechanics, mini games, party members, all things XVI lacks.

Time won’t be kind to it.

CBU3 and the people involved came off very confident about the game before release. I actually believe they thought FFXVI was a banger of a game and story. To be fair, there are moments where it definitely was. But the pacing, the way they padded out the quieter moments, the lack of RPG mechanics, it all shows a fundamental misunderstanding on their part on what makes a fun game.

They were not the right people for the job.

 

[SkylineRKR]

It’s gonna get worse when FFVII Rebirth
Drops. Proper world exploration, RPG mechanics, mini games, party members, all things XVI lacks.

Time won’t be kind to it.

CBU3 and the people involved came off very confident about the game before release. I actually believe they thought FFXVI was a banger of a game and story. To be fair, there are moments where it definitely was. But the pacing, the way they padded out the quieter moments, the lack of RPG mechanics, it all shows a fundamental misunderstanding on their part on what makes a fun game.

They were not the right people for the job.

I was mixed on Remake, but I liked it more than FFXVI in terms of combat, party mechanics, builds etc. Rebirth seems to become an improvement over Remake with more locales and more freedom in general. I think its going to be better than XVI.

CBU3 is clearly an MMO studio which is fine, but their quest design and pacing doesn't work for single player. In an MMO the very purpose is padding to make queues bearable. I rather they won't touch a single player FF again.

FFXVI was lacking in so many things. At about 75% I dropped it, and never returned. I don't see any incentive to keep playing it. I hated the story delivery as well.

 

[The artful mincer]

Should have been a spin-off.

Square-Enix got it wrong. They thought that if development goes smoothly, it is going to be a good thing. But really, there is no link between a development going well and actually making something people want. Making a game people will enjoy might imply having to go through difficult times in terms of development. Not saying that your development has to be a train-wreck, of course, but they probably lost sight a bit too much of the metric "player having fun" in their process.

For all the smooth development talk it still took 8 years between main releases.

I know we got FFVII Remake in between and CBU3 work on FF14 but still that's way too long for what we got.

It's crazy that FFVII rebirth will done in under 4 years and yet looks way more ambitious than 16.

Again maybe showing the power of iteration and not starting from scratch. Less pressure presumably to get monster sales as well.

 

[The artful mincer]

It’s gonna get worse when FFVII Rebirth
Drops. Proper world exploration, RPG mechanics, mini games, party members, all things XVI lacks.

Time won’t be kind to it.

CBU3 and the people involved came off very confident about the game before release. I actually believe they thought FFXVI was a banger of a game and story. To be fair, there are moments where it definitely was. But the pacing, the way they padded out the quieter moments, the lack of RPG mechanics, it all shows a fundamental misunderstanding on their part on what makes a fun game.

They were not the right people for the job.

I guess they thought they could do no wrong after FF14s success.

There's a chance another turn based JRPG might knock it out the park. Dragon Quest, Persona are on the rise in the west not to mention that other JRPG atlus are making which I can't spell.

It would not surprise me if another JRPG can break out and outsell all FFs in recent memory. Which would be funny considering how much Sqaure have shat on turn based combat.

 

[Katatonic]

I enjoyed FFXVI a lot. So did millions of others. I hope they continue with the more M rated themes and straight action gameplay style, just more refined.

 

[wvnative]

I guess they thought they could do no wrong after FF14s success.

There's a chance another turn based JRPG might knock it out the park. Dragon Quest, Persona are on the rise in the west not to mention that other JRPG atlus are making which I can't spell.

It would not surprise me if another JRPG can break out and outsell all FFs in recent memory. Which would be funny considering how much Sqaure have shat on turn based combat.

I am personally uncaring if a new FF game is turn-based or action, i enjoy both, as long as it's good. I didn't like 15 not because it was action, but because its a bad action game.

HOWEVER, I cannot understand why Square-Enix insists turn-based won't sell on a AAA budget when they haven't even tried it. The last mainline FFs with proper turn-based combat was X/X-2, they literally haven't tried it, so how do they know? And as I recall, X and X-2 were highly successful at the time. How can they say it won't sell if they haven't tried it in 20 years?

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

FFXVI was mid...

 

[Fbh]

CBU3 and the people involved came off very confident about the game before release. I actually believe they thought FFXVI was a banger of a game and story. To be fair, there are moments where it definitely was. But the pacing, the way they padded out the quieter moments, the lack of RPG mechanics, it all shows a fundamental misunderstanding on their part on what makes a fun game.

That was the weirdest part of it all for me.
XIV basically had to be rebooted after a failed launch, XV went through a long and troubled development (having started as Versus XIII), VII Remake took a long time and Square took over the project internally after apparently not liking what Cyberconnect2 was doing, etc

For the first time in a long time it felt like everything was going smoothly with a big new FF. No big delays, no big dev team changes, comments about how smoothly development was going in every interview, the team seemingly taking a long time to polish and even confidently announcing the game wouldn't need a day 1 patch (though they did release one after all). I really thought this was going to be stellar in every way.

Then the game comes out and while it definitely has some great highlight moments, a big part of it feels rushed and underdeveloped: Terrible sidequests, open areas with virtually nothing to do or find, very basic RPG mechanics, very basic dungeons, very basic gear/crafting/economy, even the graphics aren't really good enough to justify the very poor performance and low resolutions.
FFXVI speaks poorly about the people involved with it because it feels like every issue with it was intentional instead of the result of a troubled development. Based on their comments it seems like they released exactly the game they wanted to make, it just wasn't particularly great.

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

One of the best stories in gaming. Couldn't believe Kotaku hating on the writing for the women when Jill is literally finally bucking the trend of insufferable perfection at everything and they act like that's a bad thing since she has to rely on others sometimes.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

One of the best stories in gaming. Couldn't believe Kotaku hating on the writing for the women when Jill is literally finally bucking the trend of insufferable perfection at everything and they act like that's a bad thing since she has to rely on others sometimes.

She has no personality or character. Her entire revenge arc was one of the least convincing things I've ever witnessed in fiction. But uh... She's a smashable waifu if you're straight I guess.

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

She has no personality or character. Her entire revenge arc was one of the least convincing things I've ever witnessed in fiction. But uh... She's a smashable waifu if you're straight I guess.

Bah she's strong but still shows vulnerability and forges one of the most natural and believable romances with Clive where they fight with, emotionally support, love, and call out each other so nicely.